In a country where the U.S. military lives by the motto “ready to fight tonight,” the families of servicemembers in South Korea are asked always to be prepared to take flight at very short notice. It is one of the realities of living in the shadow of North Korea, a country with a history of provocations and unpredictable behavior. There are 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, along with more than 100,000 other American citizens. Kim said that in planning for a possible evacuation, “We really don’t know who we’d have to evacuate … (but) our planning figure is 220,000.”